BurntPhotons

I should probably be in bed sleeping because I've got a cold. It started hitting me a day or two ago and is in full on cold mode today/tonight, but before I go to bed I wanted to update some stuff.

It appears Microsoft is already sending me back my Xbox 360. I checked the status Sunday on my repair and saw the status included a UPS tracking number. I would have appreciated an email about the change, but oh well.

Saturday I freaked out a bit when I checked the status and saw that my account no longer showed any machine in for repair at all. I was imaging the headaches I was going to have to go through but hoped I had just caught them during an update cycle which appears to be what happened.

The Xbox really could have helped me out today. I would have loved to veg out and play a little with the way I feel. Tired, runny nose, sneezing, and tired.

Instead I have been catching up on a whole bunch of This Week in Tech podcasts and videos as I veg out today. Actually I have to mention the strange trip to using my RSS feed reader as my podcast downloader.

About a week ago, I started using Feeddemon as my podcast downloader. It has a program called Feed Station which downloads attachments in RSS newsfeeds.

A year or two ago when I started listening to podcasts I was using the Ipodder Lemon later known as Juice Receiver. After a few months, I found that every now and then Juice would just start downloading tons of old podcasts. It was often a headache, but after trying several pod catching programs it was the only program that seemed to do a good job overall.

A few months ago I started using the Democracy Player, which is now known as Miro, to download my video podcasts and kept Juice for just the audio podcasts. This created a convenient way to separate audio and video podcasts since I interact with the two differently.

Weeks before this I had started using FeedDemon to download a new video podcast called Mahalo Daily with Veronica Belmont because Miro wouldn't recognize the feed while FeedDemon would. I have to give props to the FeedDemon author Nick Bradbury for creating such a solid program which he has been updating a lot recently.

Anyway to make a long story shorter, after a few hiccups with FeedDemon everything seems to be running smoothly and I've dropped my memory usage a bit with FeedDemon only taking about 35 megs of memory. The only thing I miss is using Miro's interface which exposed me to new video podcasts, but then again I waist enough time watching and listening to the stuff I'm already downloading.

I saw this video on Amber Mac's weblog today and couldn't help adding it here. I love the song (it was the reason I wanted to buy the game Gears of War for the Xbox 360), and the video is interesting too. You can find the original video here. I won't get into the politics of the whole thing but it states some very interesting information about the world if it were only made up of 100 people.

I just realized how odd that the song was used for both Gears of War advertising and this video. Strange world.

It seems as if as soon as I say I'm going to make myself put more content on this blog that inevitably something comes up to slam that idea down for a bit.

Late last week I was informed I was doing a video piece and going out and shooting and putting something together.

I'm all for video. It's where newspapers are heading and where they can help keep themselves lucrative and breaching the new edge of media. In the end this knowledge will make me more marketable and useful. So, I decided a while back that I was going to submerge into and hope that I would be able to come up for a breath and at some point.

So I put pressure and on myself to learn final cut pro and put something together by the end of my three day weekend. I shot a football scrimmage Friday night and spent the entire weekend immersing myself into the video world. I ate and slept, but I wanted to give it my best shot right up front. Produce something that would show what the photo department was capable of given the right equipment and time (and a bit of direction).

At the end of three day weekend I had a 35 second promo spot for the ThisWeek Community Newspapers Central Ohio Football Preview tab. I'm happy to say it was well received by upper management.

The final piece took way too much time to produce, but it wasn't fully about the end product as it was about the path getting there. I'll upload the video to the website in the next day or two. I need to veg out now. I've been putting in extra hours at work and I'm feeling like if I take on another task my head will melt.

The start of Friday night football is tomorrow, so I need to rest up for that too.

Time Magazine has done a a top 50 website list where you can vote on their list. Looks like they have some good choices on the list, but perhaps a few stinkers too.

Check out The List

The current top site is Expert Village which allows people to view and post video files demonstrating or explaining things. For example there are videos to explain how to play a classical guitar and perform a magical trick or apply make-up.

So do you know TED?

As their about page states:

"TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader."

"The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)."

It is a really cool event. (Or at least appears that way from back here in Ohio.)

They get some big-named presenters like Jane Goodall, Bono, President Bill Clinton, Jeff Bezos, and James Nachtwey to talk on all subjects they care about or champion such as technology, AIDS, and global warming. In addition TED answers the wishes of some of the presenters ever year.

TED offers some of their presentations online to view from their site. I happened to stumble across them a long time ago and am slowly making my way through some of their video content. I just stumbled across this presentation from the My Extra Life blog which linked to a YouTube presentation by one of the presenters talking about a a photosynth demo.

Check it out... and all the other video's at TED.com.

EDITED 8-9-2007: Fixed the links to TED.com. Evidentially I suck at html.

A story at TechIQmag.com makes me wonder if Microsoft is digging their own hole by gouging the consumer for every copy of Windows Vista.

"Microsoft today announced quarterly revenue of $14.4 billion and net income of $4.93 billion. In other words, Microsoft’s daily net income is about $55 million. That’s $55 million in pure profit every 24 hours."

The story by "The Var Guy" goes on to note that it takes Microsoft 10 hours to exceed Red Hat's quarterly net income, 2 weeks to exceed Apple's quarterly net income and 10 weeks to exceed Wal-Mart's quarterly net income.

But is it fair for Microsoft to make $55 billion a day? I mean after all... we live in a free market economy here in the USA. If people are willing to pay for a product, why can't a company charge whatever price a consumer is willing to pay? If consumers don't want to pay $450 for Windows Vista Ultimate edition, they don't have to. They can move to another operating system.

What a weekend, and it isn't even over yet.

Friday I went down to Cincinnati for a cousin's wedding. The event was beautiful (and so was the bride). It was great seeing the family and some of my other cousins who were able to make it to the event.

Then I went back to my mom's, slept 4 hours and headed to Ball State University for a multimedia seminar today. I just got back from it, and I feel my body beginning to turn off bit by bit from all the traveling and lack of sleep. I could push myself to work on a few things but this is suppose to be the weekend, right?

The seminar was great though. Learned tons and I'll hit some of the highlights when I recoup a bit and get my head back on straight. I'll also get a couple photos from the wedding up.

For now... I'll turn on some Brad Sucks and chill out. So goes the sleep deprived.

I have to admit I'm a bit space crazy. Perhaps it goes back to my childhood where I had dreams of being Captain Kirk or my desire to fly airplanes. (Or maybe it is more of a psychological problem I should investigate further now that I've read that sentence a second time.)

But anyway... The program FeedDemon helps me keep track of a multitude of subjects. Many of the sites it checks out for me are photography related, but in trying to catchup on the myriad of websites it tracks for me I've noticed that I appear to have a geeky love of space and science. Here's a list of just a few that I keep track of.

Astonomy Picture of the Day -- It does what it says. Images from The Hubble Space Telescope or from some other satellites are the sites main bread and butter, but it is not limited to pure space images. I've seen photographs of comets in the desert sky or a closeup of planet passing in front of the sun. Each time I look at the site I find something stunning.

Science @ NASA -- The site touches on some of the science behind the space program. A recent article was about a satellite using Pluto to gain some speed for it's path through the universe.

NASA Breaking News-- Probably the geekiest of them all for me, the site keeps me up to date on all of the goings on at NASA, such as when the space shuttle is rolling to the launch pad, or what is going on with the international space station or what sort of budget has just been passed. Some of that I'll admit I don't read.

I wonder which came first. My love of science fiction or my love of science.